In a news conference on Wednesday, FBI Special Agent Teresa Carlson told reporters that Wade Michael Page shot himself after opening fire in a Wisconsin Sikh temple on Sunday killing six people and injuring three others.
Carlson told reporters, "Subsequent to that wound, it appears that Page died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head," according to Reuters. The 40-year-old veteran was shot in an encounter with the police, but his death was caused when Page shot himself in the head after being shot in the stomach by the police.
Police confirm that Page used a Springfield 9mm semiautomatic handgun to carry out the attacks, the same type of gun used by James Holmes in the Colorado movie massacre. Police tell Reuters that the guns were purchased legally from a local gun-store in Milwaukee.
On Sunday, Page opened fire in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek Wisconsin, killing five men and one woman and critically injuring three others, including a police officer. The 40-year-old U.S. veteran came under the attention of the FBI a couple of times for his affiliation with radical white supremacist groups. Police say the alleged killer was a "white supremacist" according to ABC News.
Page has been identified as a member of a racist organization called Skinhead Band Apathy in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He joined the organization in 2010, but has showed racist proclivity from much earlier than that, in 2000, according to Director of the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, Page purchased items from a neo-Nazi group called National Alliance.
A federal law enforcement officer told The Los Angeles Times that he was also suspected of providing funds to terrorist groups, but lacked conclusive evidence to open investigations. The FBI is treating the case as an act of "domestic terrorism," according to Yahoo News.
Page's neighbors and colleagues, who spoke to the media, said that he was a loner, but often expressed his prejudice of other races and ethnicities, but no one ever thought any such violence act would manifest from his bigotry.
One officer, who served with Page in the army, told Pierce Morgan in a CNN interview, "He would often mention the racial holy war that was coming...And you know, we just looked at it as he was trying to get attention to himself... because he was always the loner type of person. Even in a group of people, he would be off alone," according to CNN News.
Another neighbor told the Guardian that Page was "creepy," telling the U.K. based paper "I stayed away from him."
While, the FBI continues to treat the case as a "domestic terrorism," a cry from the Sikh community urges the case to be classified as a "hate crime."
